I Tried Going Vegan For A Month And This Is What Happened

I'm not actually vegan. Or vegetarian. In fact, I really, really like bacon. Perhaps I like it a little too much. As a recent transplant to Portland, OR, I love eating my way through the city. And Portland makes it easy: I could eat at a new food cart every day for nearly 2 years without running out of new ones to try. But all that access to convenient and delicious food may not be the best idea for my waistline—or my health. That's why I'm so intrigued by the evidence that vegans may be thinner than both vegetarians and omnivores, and may even have clearer skin, stronger hair and nails, and fewer PMS symptoms.

These potential health benefits aren't the only reason the vegan diet appeals, of course—let's also talk about animal welfare. As someone who grew up in rural Kansas, I've seen animals treated humanely and raised with dignity. But I also know that not all animals are, and even dairy cows and hens are subject to factory-farming cruelties. "Today's farms are not like the ones most of us learned about in school; they are mechanized factories where an animal's welfare is of little concern compared to profit," points out Vegan Action.

With all this on my mind, along with the massive environmental impact of meat-eating, I resolved to embrace the vegan diet for 30 days—for one month, I consumed nothing made with animal products of any sort, including milk, eggs, or honey. I even ditched my wool socks and gloves. Here are 8 things that happened during my 30 days as a vegan:

I had to rethink breakfast.
In my zeal to get started right away, I forgot to go shopping for breakfast and realized the next morning that I didn't have anything to eat. I was used to eating eggs in the morning. When I was in too much of a hurry to cook eggs, I'd buy boiled eggs from the cafeteria at work. If I couldn't have eggs for breakfast or cereal and milk, what could I have? The first morning I ended up grabbing a package of almonds and a pear. After a trip to the store, I found a vegan egg substitute that makes a convincing batch of scrambled eggs, and I tried cooking that with some tempeh bacon substitute on the side. I also found Umpqua Oats has several vegan varieties.

After that, I started favoring almond-butter toast or avocado toast with black coffee on the side. We had a lot of fresh garden tomatoes so I started putting slices of tomatoes on top of my almond butter or avocado toast with a shake of salt and pepper—it was actually pretty amazing.

I didn't starve.
I didn't even miss meat. Part of this is the convenience of living in Portland, which PETA rates the most vegan-friendly city in the US. I was never faced with a situation where I was really hungry and couldn't eat. Sometimes I didn't eat well—choosing French fries when there were no other vegan options—but the only times when there were literally no vegan options available to me were social snack situations where I wasn't actually hungry and didn't really need to eat anyway.

In fact, I discovered a lot of foods I would never have tried. There's a vegan barbeque spot near me that serves amazing food, for example. I no longer need permission to try it.

I discovered that vegetable-based proteins are surprisingly filling.
One thing I expected to find was that I would need to constantly graze in order to get enough nutrition. After all, herbivores do tend to eat a larger volume of food compared to carnivores. But I found myself stuffed and unable to finish a lot of dishes if they involved a vegetable-based protein.

Vegan meat is pretty good, but vegan cheese still needs work.
Some vegan meat sources are better than others. The texture is usually chewier than what you'd find in animal meat, but not offensively so. A vegan hot dog with toppings tastes more delicious to me than an actual hot dog with grease and gristle, even after lifting any personal restrictions on eating meat. However, vegan cheese is terrible. The texture is wrong and the flavor is off. Vegan cheese makes pizzas taste disgusting (just make it with extra sauce instead of cheese substitute). If you love cheese too much to give it up, veganism isn't for you.

Vegan foods aren't automatically healthy.
You don't have to eat organic foods to be vegan. You don't have to give up processed foods. Some surprisingly vegan foods include: French fries (as long as they aren't fried in animal fat), soda, Oreos, beer, white bread, and sometimes even doughnuts (Portland's VooDoo Doughnuts offers daily vegan selections). Eating a bunch of junk food is going to make you feel bad whether or not there are animal products in it.

I did lose weight.
I weighed myself daily using my Wi-Fi connected scale, and by the end of the 30 days, I'd lost a very reasonable 5 pounds. I didn't try to limit my portion sizes or food choices beyond veganism at all. I suspect a lot of my weight loss had to do with being thoughtful about my food and not being able to put cheese sauce or butter on things.

But my vegan diet was not otherwise a health panacea.
I did not get clearer skin. In fact I ended up with a nasty acne outbreak at the end of my month. I also did not notice a reduction in PMS, an increase in energy, or stronger hair and nails. To be fair, 30 days may be too soon to see most of those benefits.

I know a lot more about what I eat.
Being vegan for a month forced me to think about everything I put into my mouth. I read every ingredient label. I asked questions at restaurants. I didn't take every snack someone offered just because it was there. I'm no longer vegan. However, I would like to think that I left this experiment as a much more mindful eater. I'm also keeping the almond-butter toast for breakfast.

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